Gentrification bears down on San Francisco — in 1985

Back in 1985, croissants were a mortal threat to San Francisco’s soul. (Carey Sweet/The Chronicle)

This just in: “San Francisco has become perhaps the most gentrified large city in the nation.”

Growing business sectors are crowding the tip of our peninsula, leading to “spiraling housing costs, clogged traffic, an exodus of middle-class and poor families, and declining black and Latino populations. And the trend seems certain to continue …”

The above quotes are from an article that appeared on April 3, 1985, and was sent my way by local flâneur David Prowler. Manhattanization was the buzzword of the time, as opponents of downtown towers were warning that prosperity threatened the city’s diversity and character, what now would be called its soul.

One observer cautions that “as better-educated and better-paid residents outbid the poor for housing and as other necessities increase in price, there could be class tension.” An elected official predicts “today’s residents of the low-rent apartments in Chinatown and the Tenderloin are ‘the last generation’.” As for impact on the ground as opposed to the skyline, a city report warns that the surge in growth “would overcrowd already jammed freeways, exacerbate parking problems and overload public transit.”

Many of the particulars have changed, of course: Harbingers of change now are artisanal coffee and $4 toast, not “one highly successful new chain (that) mass markets croissants, sort of a Yuppie version of Winchell’s doughnut shops.” Yuppies have given way to techies as the occupying force (and derogatory term).

And the same city report that warns of crowded roadways warns that “Housing costs could average as much as $240,000.” Thirty years later, that sounds like chump change around here.

But you get the point. For all the undeniable cultural tumult of the past few years, all the tensions and strains that continue, San Francisco has seemed to cross the point of no return again and again — at least going back to 1906.